Hughes blasts Clarke's criticism

04:59 PM CST on Monday, March 29, 2004

By Jim Vertuno / Associated Press

Presidential adviser Karen Hughes kicked off a six-week national book tour Sunday with unblinking support for President Bush and the war in Iraq.

Speaking about her memoir "Ten Minutes from Normal," Hughes said she was upset by recent claims from former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke that the administration didn't take the threat from al-Qaida seriously enough before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hughes called Clarke's criticism the "Washington blame game."

"The only person responsible for the al-Qaida attacks on America was al-Qaida," Hughes said Sunday. "I've been very distressed and almost sickened as I've watched over the last week the distortion that I've seen."

The book release comes nearly two years after Hughes traded her pressure-cooker days at the White House for a life in Austin more "attuned to the school and church calendar." She has increased her public appearances as Bush's re-election campaign moved forward, and she expects to join the campaign full time in August.

Hughes' memoir is the story of balancing her personal life as a wife and mother with her job as one of the president's most trusted advisers.

Her memoir calls Bush "powerful and tough" on the war on terror.

She said Bush helped compose speeches, revised Middle East policy and marched nations to war without fear or doubt after terrorists struck in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think more highly of the president today and of Mrs. Bush than the day I went to work for him," she said.

Recent books by Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have been critical of the White House, including claims that from its earliest days the Bush administration was looking for ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Hughes wrote that the administration weighed every option before going to war in Iraq.

"I watched over the course of a long year as smart, thoughtful people considered every option; debated strategy, worked hard to convince other nations that the world should present a united front," she wrote.

Hughes also writes that removing Saddam from power was a blow against terrorism.

"I have always been perplexed by those who questioned Saddam Hussein's ties to terror," she wrote. "He paid the families of suicide bombers, thus encouraging young people to kill themselves and others and fostering terror and continued hatred in the Middle East."

In her remarks Sunday, Hughes said "we all believed" -- including the Clinton administration and foreign governments -- that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"Every credible intelligence agency in the world," she said. "If we were wrong, it's very important that we know. That's why the president appointed a commission to look at this, not in a political context in an election year, but whoever the next president is, we need to know if the collective intelligence of the world were that far off."